The Summer Man

Chapter THIRTY-ONE





Amanda didn’t sleep well, was half-awake when the explosion rolled up the hill in the very early morning. In her half sleep she was sure that she was hearing the effects of her young-man-at-fire dream, but when she woke up a little, she wasn’t so sure. She also thought that if she was still at John’s, closer to their tourist, she might be certain; she was way more calm and focused around him, she thought, although maybe she was just freaking because she’d seen Eric Hess blown to shit; Eric, poor, lost Eric, murdered, and she knew she was supposed to be afraid of their tourist but the more she thought about him, the more she wasn’t.

She and John had stayed at Big Blue, which had been every bit as lacey and self-conscious as she’d expected, and Sarah had lent her some clothes, and she’d finally passed out for a couple of hours before she heard someone get up and start a shower. She had dreamed that she was very small in a land of screaming giants, where every time she tried to move, she was kicked down into the mud. When she finally ventured out and saw Karen Haley for just a moment, heading down the hall, she thought she knew who’d influenced her sleep…but maybe not; maybe the dream was her subconscious reaction to seeing Eric gunned down practically on top of her or knowing that for the rest of her life, she’d remember clearly that splitsecond when she realized what Leary was going to do; she’d remember screaming at him to stop and knowing what was going to happen, anyway. That had been far more traumatizing than the actual bloodbath, and that had been f*cking horrible. Amanda felt like she was an old woman already, the things she would have to think about and talk about and know for the rest of her life, whatever else she did.

She spent better than an hour lying in the clean, comfortable bed with her eyes closed, thinking, half dozing, seeing things. By the time she finally got up to go downstairs, she thought she had some idea of what was coming. Maybe. She wasn’t sure if she was ready.

Bob arrived just before eight, pale and wrapped snugly in an uncomfortable-looking sling. He insisted that they go to John’s house first for his gun, over John’s protests that the gun had surely been found and confiscated, and that the police might not let him inside, anyway. The two ducked off into another room to discuss the matter, as if there was any doubt where they were going or what they were going to do.

Amanda drank two cups of coffee with straight heavy whipping cream and ate a plain roll that Sarah gave her, to keep herself from monster acid indigestion. And to fortify herself a little, anyway. She didn’t know what was going to happen when they knocked on their tourist’s door—

Prisoner, shadows, shell…sea?

—but she thought it would be important, a very important day in her life, and she didn’t want to throw up because she’d been living on coffee and nothing for two days. Plus, she’d thrown up already in the shower at the hospital—when they’d finally let her wash Eric’s blood off her after swabbing her thoroughly in embarrassing places—when she’d watched the pink water swirl down the drain. She’d cried and puked and cried some more.

The thing was, since shortly after Eric’s death, when they’d taken her to the hospital, she’d had this very strange feeling of…of having choices. There were paths that lay in front of her, unexplored…not just paths, but an infinite array of steps in every direction, and she had only to take a first to understand how absolutely free she was. She could see herself, fairly clearly, the person she was, if she could let go of the things that had sheltered her from the casual brutality of her life until now…her defenses, her beliefs, her selfishness; her right to bemoan her fate. There was a higher ground, and lying in bed this morning she had actually seen it, had seen that if she wanted to be, she was strong enough to face her life without attaching herself to its drama.

This is so f*cking out there, she told herself, stuffing the tasteless roll down her throat, waiting for John and Bob to come back and act like they knew what they were doing, like they were in charge. She was like a grown-up or some shit, the things she was thinking, the way she was thinking them…but she also suspected that most adults didn’t think like this, or not much. Not that she’d ever noticed. It was frightening, but only a little because she could decide whether to run from the fear or let it pass, whether to follow the emotional rules she’d invented for herself or try something new. The world was shifting from the black and white she’d always known and counted on, to know how to act and what to think, to a continuum of endless gray consideration, and she was also scared because she didn’t know if she was ready to be something else.

It’s a perspective shift, that’s all, she told herself. Sarah decided to stay at Big Blue, which seemed appropriate for some reason. Amanda realized, as John’s girlfriend started talking about wanting to be home when her son returned, that if Sarah had wanted to go, Amanda would have had to tell her no. It was only supposed to be her and John and Bob, that was just the right thing. She was glad it didn’t come up.

Amanda felt herself looking for their tourist’s influence as John drove Bob and herself back to his house, to park in his drive, which had been cordoned off with police tape…and finding it, finding his gentle, tortured thread of energy easily. He was there, in the gray house next to John’s. There’d been enough shock in her life this summer for the wow factor of the coincidence to be a little thin; she’d already accepted that some things were fated to be, which meant that of course John lived next door to the guy, it just figured. She was a little surprised she hadn’t pinned it down already, but it made sense to her that Bob and John had been necessary to put all the pieces together. F*ck if she knew why.

“Leave the gun,” she said, as they got out of the car. There were no police in front of John’s house, but there was a county van parked at the side and a government-issue sedan. Amanda couldn’t imagine why there weren’t reporters standing around…although maybe they’d been distracted by one of her dream images come to life. The fire that had exploded, killing the young arsonist, perhaps. Her thoughtful, dozing half sleep this morning had been laced with conclusions, of knowing things that might be true, but she hadn’t said anything to them yet, not sure if it was important anymore. It was crazy; the shit she’d been tripping on all summer suddenly didn’t even seem relevant. Important, but not the way they thought. Being here, so close to him, she felt like…like her channels were expanding, receiving things more clearly.

“Seriously,” she added, off Bob’s expression. “We just need to meet him. He’s not armed.”

“How do you know? Do you know that?” Bob looked like death. The bright, hazy sun made him look like a vampire. Amanda wore her shades, her arms folded tightly although it was already warm, and the car had been warm.

She nodded. “Yeah.”

“Any other useful tidbits?” Bob snapped. “Like what’s going to happen? Like who this guy is? Like how we’re going to get him to come to the door?”

“Chelsea,” Amanda said. She looked at the small, gray house, so quiet and still. He was thinking about the girl even now, the little girl in the pink dress from the picture she’d seen in her dreams, when she’d first thought the words shell-sea. But she wasn’t a little girl anymore, and it wasn’t shell-sea; it was Chelsea. “We tell him it’s Chelsea. He thinks about her name. She’s important to him.”

John was looking at her with a careful eye. He and Sarah had made love after they’d thought everyone was asleep, long and slow, and he was trying not to think about it, he was trying extremely hard, and so it kept coming back; she could hear him.

“Amanda,” he began. He was going to question her further, try to find out what she knew about everything forever, but she didn’t want to talk about it anymore, she wanted to meet him. She wanted to see his face; she wanted to explore the mysterious chaos that cloaked his thoughts; she wanted to know what he knew, just for a moment. She wanted to know his real name.

“Seriously, John, enough,” she said. “Bob should be in bed. We need to see him to get this over with. I need to see him. Bob’s right; things are clearer here. Or less clear, depending on who you are, I guess.”

“What do you mean? Why are you in such a rush?”

“Because I want to know how it turns out,” she said. “Because I saw some things this morning, and I feel…I feel like this is part of it, what we’re doing right now. Maybe even the whole point. Probably the whole point, at least for me. Let’s just please go, OK?”

She turned and started for the rental, and they fell in behind her, Bob walking slowly. He wasn’t as doped as he needed to be to feel no pain, and John was still trying to ask questions. She went to the back door, sure that he was closer to the kitchen, that there was a basement there, and started knocking, and saying that it was Chelsea, would he please open the door, and after a minute she was banging at the door with the heel of her hand, her voice breaking as she called herself by a stranger’s name. She could feel light burst inside his head each time she said it; she felt him walk up the stairs on numb legs, and the expectation she was generating made her cry, it was so sad and lonely and, and hopeful. When he opened the door and saw her he thought she was the girl, older and taller than he’d expected but still her, his niece, and when he gathered her up, she let him, wishing she was the girl, he was so happy, his relief like a cool, sweeping wave.

“Hey there,” Bob said, alarmed, but Amanda was feeling his heartbeat against her face beneath his thin tee—

—and she made her decision, accepting what was going to happen. I can do this, she thought. I’m supposed to do this.

She slipped her arms around him and pulled him close. Held him. And knew him intimately in their embrace, her understanding of another human being so far past friendship or sex or the few sad family ties she’d experienced in her short life that she was engulfed, filled to overflowing. She heard what he’d heard, saw what he’d seen. The feelings were those from a dream, intense and raw, bigger than life. His mind was unguarded and full and incredible and sad, and he couldn’t see himself anymore; he was a knot of self-doubt and inconceivable, stretching loneliness. The shapes of his thoughts as he held her were enchanting in their starkness, in their honesty…and they were not for her.

“Let her go,” John said, from light-years away. “Amanda?”

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she said. “It’s not me. I’m sorry.”

She felt him pull back from her, the sudden intimacy cut off a second before he managed to extricate himself physically, stepping away, confused. She knew that he had to pull back, just as she had to tell him who she was; she couldn’t know him like that and lie for one more second.

He felt it, too, part of it. Something between them. She saw that he was younger than she’d imagined, pale, his eyes dark with doubt and fear. She’d seen him before…drinking coffee by himself, that day in the restaurant. Outside the theater, for poetry night. Always alone.

Again, she could see a hundred ways this could go, ways she could choose to handle this unprecedented meeting…but she already had a sense of the outcome and didn’t feel any urge to rebel against what she now believed would happen, what she mostly understood. Chelsea was his niece, by his brother who was dead, who’d killed himself.

“You’re David Abbey,” she said. “Invite us in, please.”

He gazed out at them, his face closed, his heart aching. “Who are you?” he asked, looking at her.

What a f*cking trip. She was aware of all of them, Bob’s aches and John’s fears and David Abbey’s need for her, for what she could provide, and there was no hesitation, no f*cking fear at all. She didn’t have to be coy or manipulate, she didn’t have to be what anyone expected. What she expected. There was nothing to win here, just what would eventually be acknowledged, by all of them.

“Fate, if you can believe it,” she said.





John was hopelessly adrift. He’d felt the chemistry between Amanda and David Mallon—Abbey?—when they’d embraced, not sexual but electric nonetheless, and now Amanda was talking about fate, and they were walking through the kitchen of the bland, gray rental. His neighbor, all this time. His goddamn neighbor.

Their host led them to the living room where he awkwardly offered them seats before sitting in the room’s one nice piece, a wing-backed chair. He nodded acknowledgment at John as they sat.

“Doctor,” he said, his voice low and even. He looked composed, but barely. Whoever Chelsea was—and how well could he know her, if he’d mistaken Amanda for her?—she was extremely important to him.

“Right,” Amanda said. “Excuse me. I’m Amanda. Young. You’ve met John; this is Bob Sayers, he’s a reporter. This is David Abbey.”

Abbey nodded. “So you say. And you know this because…”

“Because when you came to town, I went psychic,” she said. “Like, see the future, feel people’s feelings psychic. You came in mid-June, right? Like a week and a half in? I started seeing things. And Bob knew something was going on in town, and he found some things, and John’s our brains guy who happens to live next door, and we figured it out.”

Abbey’s expression was as carefully noncommittal as he could make it, a blank, but anyone looking at him would have seen his eyes. He was mortified.

She looked back at John. “He can’t help it,” she said. “He knows, but he can’t help it.”

“You knew this would happen,” Bob asked, not really a question. “You came here knowing that people would die.”

Abbey shifted in his chair. He held his head up. “Yes. I’m sorry. I’m leaving, tonight.”

“Maybe that’s not good enough,” Bob said.

“Different angle, Bob,” Amanda said. “Did you not hear me? He can’t help what he does.”

“He can sure as hell help where he goes.” He shot a look at Abbey. “Why here? Why did you come here?”

Abbey only stared at him, his gaze unreadable but infinitely sad.

John cleared his throat. “What is it you do? Do you know?”

Abbey’s voice was soft and careful. “I don’t, not exactly. People around me change. I don’t know the cause, but it propagates genetically; my brother had it, too. This influence. There’s a history in our line. What exists in the people around me is magnified and reflected. Things they might normally hide, I believe. Jung’s Shadow. I’m a…catalyst. A random element, or a deliberate design. Arguments could be made either way.”

He looked at Amanda. “Is there something about Chelsea? Is she all right? Did you see her?”

Amanda shook her head. “Not yet. But you’re going to see her, and I’m coming with you.”

They all stared at her. The look she wore was patient and ready.

“Hang on a second,” John said.

“Over my dead body,” Bob said.

Abbey’s cheeks had flushed. “I—that’s not going to happen.”

Amanda sighed, looking at Abbey. “Listen to me,” she said. “Look at me. I know about your brother, about Matthew.”

“What?” Abbey was transfixed, the word a dumb whisper.

“Before Chelsea was born, before he even knew about her, he killed himself. Before he knew that you had it, too. And you’re afraid she might be a carrier, and you’re afraid…you’re just afraid. But I can tell you what you need to know.”

Abbey shook his head, his eyes still, his attention entirely on Amanda. “Impossible.”

She leaned forward and spoke in a kind, careful voice. “I’m the balance, David. For you. For now. In my dreams, I think I see the things that are fated, because of what you do.”

She swallowed, her smile a nervous tic. “Not all of it; I can’t promise that. There’s a lot I don’t see. But there are other things, when I’m awake. Some things can be changed. I’m sure of it. My friend Devon did it; he’s alive because he changed the circumstances, because of what I told him. And I know what people are thinking. Where they might go, in their minds.”

Abbey was shaking his head again. “You wouldn’t be safe.”

“I already am,” she said. “I’m twice as strong here, with you, and not just in a psychic sense. I’ve been through an amazing amount of shit since you got here, and everything that happened it’s like I got older, I got smarter…I got closer to you. To this.”

She dropped her voice to a whisper and said something John didn’t catch. He thought she said to love. Whatever it was, Abbey’s expression flickered. He studied her face.

“Amanda, how ’bout you get this batshit idea out of your head, right now,” Bob said. “You don’t know this man—”

“Yes, I do—”

“—and there’s no way in hell you’re going anywhere with him, not based on five seconds of contact, I don’t care what you think you see.”

Amanda looked at him calmly, at him and then John, ignoring Abbey for the moment. “OK, listen up,” she said. “You’ve both been great. Really, really great. I think both of you are good guys, and you want to do the right thing. Granted, I’m a teenager so therefore an idiot about some things, but even with you two watching out for me, there is nothing for me in Port Isley, no future at all; I was leaving anyway. And I just met someone who needs me, who absolutely needs me, and this is why everything happened at once, this is why everything ends here, now, not because I’m going to die. Because I’m leaving. We both are.”

She glanced back to Abbey. “I dreamed it.”

Bob looked at John, his expression a twist of frustration. “Would you speak up, Doctor? Explain to her about stranger danger, maybe?”

He turned and shot silent daggers at Abbey. “And you, don’t get your pecker up. She’s not legal.”

Amanda’s tone was calm, so calm and reasonable. “I can make this decision, Bob. It’s fast, but not impulsive. I want this. For a lot of reasons.”

Abbey seemed slightly awed by Amanda. “I haven’t said what I want.”

Amanda reached out and tried to take his hand, but he pulled away, avoiding her touch.

“You want to see Chelsea,” she said. “I can meet her first. I can tell you what will happen. What might happen.”

Abbey fisted his hands in his lap, the picture of anxiety. “And then what?”

Her expression said nothing. “Then we decide if we keep being useful to one another or if we part ways.”

“Do you know?” he asked. His voice trembled. “Can you see…”

“I see you,” she said, and that electricity from before passed through the room. John felt as though he were witnessing a private moment between old friends, a first kiss, a power surge, a mother and son talking; he couldn’t relate it to any one thing. It was all those things; it was a palpable feeling of energy.

“I think we should talk about this,” he said, finally. “No one has slept well, and there’s nothing saying a decision has to be made right this second, is there?”

Amanda rolled her eyes at him. “Ah, the voice of reason. You were planning on taking me in permanently, John? Your plate’s full enough.”

“What do you mean?”

She looked at him with an unlikely kindness. “Whether you’re meant to be with her, that’s not set in stone. People change all the time; people decide things because of who they are and what they want. You can make it happen or let it go…and it will work or it won’t. What guarantee is there that it all won’t end tomorrow? For anyone, ever?”

To have his silent fears so neatly laid out and inspected…John couldn’t say he cared for the feeling. He couldn’t fault her honesty, but as a therapist, she lacked finesse.

“Little contradictory there, aren’t you?” he asked. “You’re arguing both sides, determinism and free will. Is it fate or choice?”

“Both. Or neither.”

“That doesn’t make sense.”

Amanda nodded. “You got me there. Everything else has been so clear for all of us, up till now.”

“He’s a grown man,” Bob said. “You’re seventeen. You think he’s not going to find that useful?”

“You have no idea what I know,” Amanda said.

“Why don’t you tell me, then?”

“You’re going to give up the paper, turn it over to Nancy,” Amanda said. “You’re going to start writing a book about what happened in—”

“Stop it,” Bob said. He looked ill. “Stop. I don’t want to hear that.”

“Right. He does, though,” she said, and tilted her head at Abbey. “For him, it means being able to have a life. To know where he can go and how long he can stay.”

“I don’t like being treated like I’m not here,” Abbey said.

“Yeah, it sucks, doesn’t it?” Amanda said, turning back to him. Her tone was affectionate, as though she’d known him forever, but her expression was dark. “I think everything had to happen the way it did for me to get here, to where my head is. For us to meet and have it be the right thing at the right time for both of us.”

John looked at Abbey, the man he’d dismissed as an introvert not so long ago when they’d crossed paths in the park, the man responsible for the depth of his connection to Sarah, if all this madness was true, if Amanda knew what she was talking about. The man responsible for everything.

If, if. He knew better. He believed.

“How long will the effect continue?” he asked. “After you go.”

Abbey shook his head. His eyes were cool and clear, if perhaps dazed from their meeting. From meeting Amanda, certainly, who was as calm and implacable as the tide, who already treated him as though their future was a certainty. Abbey was responding to it, too, leaning toward her slightly, as a plant leans toward the sun. “Varies. A week, maybe? Two at the outside. I could look it up.”

“The lines of numbers,” Amanda said. “He writes everything down. Since Matthew died, since he realized he’s like his brother, he’s been trying to document the effect.”

Off the young man’s shocked expression, she added, “I’m sorry, David. Mr. Abbey. I wish you knew what I do, that’s all, about yourself. About what kind of person you are.”

She addressed all of them. “If you need more time to adjust to this concept, this unexpected turn, that’s fine. And I guess if one of you wanted to be an ass about this, Bob, you could, but please don’t. Just think about it before you say anything. I can see things now that I couldn’t see before. This is what’s supposed to happen.”

She looked almost fondly at the man who’d taken the last name of a disease carrier to come to their town, to move in next door to him. He wished Sarah had come, that she was standing here with him so that he could see her face, so that he could see her thoughts.

Annie. Karen, Rick Truman, Ed Billings, the fire that had burned four houses close to the theater before the fire department had brought it under control…how many hurt, how many killed?

How many could be prevented if she went with him?

“What happens with the fun house?” Bob asked abruptly. “With the mother and the baby? Do you know?”

Amanda frowned. “I…I don’t know what happened, exactly, but either way, it’s over. The carnival, I mean. It’s already gone. The baby…I don’t know about him, either. That one I haven’t seen.”

Her expression said that she hoped she wouldn’t.

“The explosion this morning, though, that was the fire I saw,” she said. “The kid blew himself up, I’m pretty sure. You know, I think it might have been Aaron Reese? He was a senior, second time. Just this guy. Remedial.”

John scrambled for the other images she’d dreamed, ignoring, for the moment, that she hadn’t told them this before coming here, that she’d chosen to do this in front of a stranger.

“The gunfire?” Bob asked.

Amanda shook her head. “I don’t know. I didn’t see that, but it will happen today, before we leave. If it hasn’t already. I mean, if my theory is correct.”

“So we could still stop it,” Bob said.

She gazed at him a moment, then shook her head again. “No. That one can’t be stopped, I don’t think.”

“Pretty sure. You think. You don’t know.” Bob shot a meaningful look at John.

“Bob, stop protecting me,” she said.

“What if I don’t want to write a book? What if I decide not to because you just told me I would?” Bob asked.

“That’s OK, too,” Amanda said. “Whatever. What are you fighting? Are you trying to argue with shit happens? Is it so impossible to believe that there are some things you can change and some you can’t? Or that I’m just seeing one possibility of many?”

“I need time to think,” Abbey said. “And you want to talk about this, obviously. I’m sorry, if you’ll excuse me…”

He stood up, and so did they. Amanda reached out and touched him again, his arm, and he started as though she had burned him.

“Right,” she said. “I’m sorry. I can see why that’d be…we’ll set down some ground rules on the drive. What time do you want to leave?”

Abbey shook his head. “Today. Tonight. I thought I’d pack and then try to get some sleep first…”

“Good luck with that,” she said. “I’ll be here by dark with a few essentials. If you want to keep being alone, you can tell me then…though you can at least drop me in Seattle, right?”

“I…”

“Good, OK,” she said. “It’s going to be OK. You’re right in the middle. You can’t see it, but you can trust me. I know that’s a crazy thing to say after how I got you to come to the door, but I didn’t know what else to do. I really am sorry. You will see her. You can, if you want to. If you’ll let me help you.”

Abbey didn’t answer, only waited for them to walk ahead, back the way they’d come. He was still flushed and obviously disturbed, his face boyish although he had to have a decade on Amanda. He wore his social ineloquence like a much younger man, like an open book. John wondered why Abbey might jerk away from someone touching him and didn’t like any implication he could imagine. He wondered what happened to the people who touched him or what he was afraid might happen. Did Amanda know? Or care?

They left by the door to the kitchen. Abbey stared after them, after Amanda, with a look that John couldn’t quite define, finally closing the door.

They automatically started walking toward John’s house.

“You really think this is a good idea?” John asked her.

“I know it is.”

“How do you know so much about him?”

“How did I know so much about you?”

“We’re going to talk you out of this,” Bob said.

“You’ll try, for reasons that are sound,” Amanda said. “And very sweet, which is why I won’t be a jerk about it if I don’t have to be, but you gotta give it up. Unless you want to hogtie me, you sort of have to let me go.”

“He won’t take you,” Bob said.

“He will. He has to.” John thought she looked like she might cry, suddenly. “He doesn’t have a choice.”

When they reached John’s back door—not crossed with crime tape—John used his key, and the door opened. There was no one in the kitchen or living room, though they could hear footsteps upstairs. In the guest room, John figured. By silent consensus, they sat at the small table, the breakfast nook table that Lauren had ordered special for their fifth anniversary, when the kitchen had finally been deemed complete.

“Think they’ll kick us out?” Amanda asked quietly.

“F*ck if they will,” Bob said. He looked sullen, like he wanted to yell at someone but had no decent target. The old reporter really did look awful.

“No one should be in the study,” John said. “Go lay down, Bob.”

Bob slumped in his chair. “Yeah, OK. But just for a while. This is not decided.”

Amanda stood up. “It is, and you’re being stubborn. Is that, like, some old guy thing, your sense of entitlement? Your feeling that things are the way you think they are because that’s what you’ve decided despite any evidence to the contrary?”

Bob slumped lower. “You said you weren’t going to be a jerk.”

“Come on, you look like shit,” Amanda said, and reached down to assist Bob to his feet, careful not to touch the arm in the sling. “Little help here, John?”

John helped. Awkwardly flanking him, they shuffled down the hall toward John’s office, Bob leaning on them, his expression sour.

“Amanda,” he said finally, as they maneuvered him to the sofa, “you’re going to be surprised, someday, how much you thought you knew. How wrong you were.”

“Yay, Bob supports my decision,” Amanda said. She got the pillow off the chair and set it at her end of the couch. “What’s your take, John? You’ve been awfully quiet. Swing his feet up on your side…careful…”

Bob winced and gritted his teeth, but they got him lying down. John covered his legs with one of the blankets stacked on the desk chair. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m…I really don’t know. I thought we were going to have to stake him through the heart, or sic the government scientists on him, something…something else.” What he thought was, A week. Maybe two.

Amanda pulled the chair next to Bob, dropped the rest of the linens on the floor, and sat down. Her voice was calm and clear.

“I’m going, with or without your support. But I’d like it. I’d like to know that someone gives a shit what happens to me after I’m gone. Maybe somewhere I could come for Christmas, or some shit.”

“Well, of course you have our support,” Bob mumbled, closing his eyes.

“Count on it,” John said, and the door, partly open, was suddenly kicked all the way in. A startled-looking chubby guy in a white hairnet and wearing gloves stood out in the hall, wearing a CSU jumpsuit.

“Who are you? Where’d the cops go? This is a closed crime scene, the whole house.”

“It’s my house,” John said.

“It’s OK,” Amanda said. “Ah, that guy said we could be in this room.”

“Who?”

Amanda studied his face a moment. “The old man. Whelan.”

The guy looked surprised. “Is he here?”

Amanda hesitated. Reading him.

These aren’t the droids you’re looking for, John thought. Amanda had gone Jedi.

“No, why would he be here?” she asked. “But something came up and the cops had to run, and they called him. He said finish what you’re working on and pack it home.”

The tech looked at John, then back at her. “You’re supposed to have badges.”

John nodded at Bob. “Our friend is ill. That’s his blood you’re swabbing up out there.”

He seemed to realize that he was alone in his battle…and Amanda had used the magic name, the one he’d thought of, that she’d plucked from his thoughts like some theatrical trick. John wondered if the old man, Whelan, also said pack it home, and suspected that he did.

“Stay out of the taped rooms, OK? And no smoking.”

The guy disappeared as quickly as he’d come, a set of footsteps moving up the stairs.

“You could open in Vegas,” Bob croaked.

Amanda looked at him, all seriousness. “This is what I want to do. What I want to be.”

“You like the power,” John said. “You like knowing things.”

“Wouldn’t you?” Amanda reached over and smoothed Bob’s hair away from his forehead, the gesture more unselfconscious and kind than John would have given her credit for, which made him feel like he didn’t know her at all. She had changed.

And she’s leaving, either way. She was right; Bob was being stubborn.

“Don’t go without me,” Bob said, already halfway to sleep.

“I’ll say good-bye, don’t worry,” she said. “Rest easy, codger.”

“F*ckin’ kids,” he mumbled, and was asleep.

They watched him for a moment, neither speaking.

“You got work today?” Amanda asked.

“Yeah, I do,” he said, and sighed. “But I’m going to have to call in, considering. Even without all this—” He gestured vaguely toward the ceiling, to the footsteps overhead, “—I’d cancel. To be with her as much as I can, if there’s only a week or two left.”

“It doesn’t have to be like that, you know.”

“No, you’re right, of course. It will be what it is. And forcing it would be the antithesis of…never mind. There’s just…I still can’t believe any of this. The idea of some genetic disorder carrying a psychological influence…that’s paranormal, that’s like science fiction. What would that do to a man, to understand that he was responsible for so much chaos?”

“Anyone ever tell you that you think too much?”

“Don’t you care why he is the way he is?” John asked.

“He doesn’t know, and he’s been researching it since I was in grade school,” Amanda said, and John felt a chill, wondering what she’d seen, exactly, when she’d touched Abbey.

“I feel like there’s so much that hasn’t been answered,” John said. “Who is this guy, really? Why doesn’t he want people to touch him? Why didn’t he know that you weren’t Chelsea?”

“Some of that is personal,” Amanda said. “But I’ll ask him to send you copies of his records, if you like. What he knows. I’m sure he will, if I ask.”

John nodded. “I would insist.”

“I’ll miss you,” she said. “Both of you.” Her eyes welled, but she blinked back her tears.

John felt helpless before her open admission. “It’s weird, everything ending like this.”

Amanda smiled. “It’s beginning, actually.”





Bob slept most of the day and woke in dizziness and pain just after dusk on John’s couch. He staggered out to the living room, where John and Amanda were watching TV, her bags packed and sitting by the front door. The CSU guys had apparently packed up and left shortly after Bob had passed out, in a great hurry, the reason already played to death over the cable news by the time he finally woke up. Six cops had been seriously injured in a shootout…about the time, in fact, that Bob had been climbing in his truck to drive over to Big Blue this morning. Stan Vincent and the county sheriff, Western Dean, were both dead. Four others wounded, one still in critical.

Bob looked at Amanda. “That’s everyone you dreamed about, isn’t it? Except—”

“Yeah,” Amanda said. “Except for the baby. Well, and that woman with blood in her hair, but that one happened weeks ago.”

“Maybe if you stayed…” Bob started, but she waved her hand at him.

“Walk me out,” she said. “It’s time.”

David Abbey was standing next to his car, a green BMW lightly covered with late pollen from the park’s trees. When they stepped outside, he popped the trunk, making room for Amanda’s things.

“So this is it?” Bob asked. “The two of you leave, and everything goes back to normal? The end?”

Amanda tilted her head. “You could see it that way, I guess.”

“Did any of it mean anything?” Bob asked, not sure what he was asking.

“It will,” she said. He thought about asking her to elaborate, but then thought of her telling him about the paper, about writing a book; it was the only time all summer long that he’d been utterly terrified. He didn’t want to know if there was a fate at all, let alone what it had in store for him.

They said good-bye beneath a waxing moon, the sky clear, the night warm. David Abbey kept his distance, which Bob thought just as well. Amanda promised to be in touch, and Abbey gave John a card with a law firm’s name on the front and a personal cell number written on the back and avoided looking at Bob. Bob had no problem with that. It didn’t seem right to him, her running off with someone who made joke names for himself and sat around feeling bad that he was a goddamn killer, oh the torture; he knew that appealed to some girls. He didn’t think Amanda was one of ’em, but she was so young, so idealistic in spite of herself.

She hugged both of them, Bob got a kiss, and they were gone, too quickly, the car’s lights sweeping over them and driving away. John rested a hand on Bob’s good shoulder, and they watched her disappear, taken away by the man she felt was her destiny, the man who’d wrought death and destruction on their little town.

“It doesn’t seem right,” Bob said.

“No.”

“You going to Sarah’s tonight?”

John shook his head. “She called earlier, said Tommy came home feeling like he was catching a cold.” He smiled a little. “She’s been hanging out with him all day, bringing him juice, watching movies with him. She’s happy.”

Bob nodded. “Mind if I go back to sleep on your couch for the next week? I’m feeling like dodging my phone. Killing a couple of houseplants, too.”

John shook his head. “Be my guest. You’ll have to fend for yourself, though.”

“Perfect.”

They went inside, Bob thinking that he would sleep and recover, that they all would, and get back to who they were before Abbey had come. He was gone. Whatever else happened, it was the end.





Chrissy Fine had thought she knew what tired was, before the baby. She lay down on the floor next to the couch and thought about how she wouldn’t get enough sleep, she never got enough sleep, ever. She used to say how tired she was, but that was bullshit, that was nothing. Since Carter had torn his way through her long, dreamy pregnancy, the self-centered moodiness of that whole thing, she hadn’t slept more than four hours in a row. For weeks, for almost two months. Now there was only the baby, feeding the baby, changing the baby, walking in circles with the baby slung across her shoulder, howling into her ear, barfing down her back. Days of slow torture, of getting just enough sleep to keep from screaming all the time and there was no payoff. She only wanted to sleep, and it was the one thing she couldn’t have. She did everything with desperate, exhausted intensity, feeding him, rocking him, trying to get him to shut up and sleep, just sleep, he was so, so tired, but he didn’t care about her, he didn’t know anything, he was a baby. And it got to where she started crying when he woke up, even when he wasn’t immediately squalling. Sometimes he just looked at her and she wept, unable to understand how other people did it. There were assloads of single parents, and how did they do it, what was she doing wrong? Because most of the time he just cried, his flat face turning red, his tongue quivering, his fists balled by his ears, one tiny arm hitting outward and around in an endless cycle, hit, hit, hit, and she was starting to fear that she’d made a mistake, a bad, bad mistake, the kind you couldn’t take back.

She lay on the floor and rocked herself, wondering how she could have wasted so much time, and just as she started to drift, to imagine that the bottle under the couch wasn’t more than a day old and that it was actually a sleeping bird, Carter woke up with a long, snuffling grunt and immediately started to bawl.

Chrissy closed her eyes, aching inside. She was scared of Carter; she wanted him to stay asleep, to not wake up and need things from her all the time, every time. She dreaded him.

Carter wailed to wake the dead and choked, a wet, strangling sound. Chrissy sat up immediately and saw by the light of the television that Carter had puked up the bottle he’d fallen asleep with, and it had run down his face and into his mouth, down around his squashed little neck, all over the couch. He was only wearing a cheap onesie, and it was soaked.

“Shit,” she said, and sat him up, patting his back with one hand, holding his tiny chest with the other. Warm, reeking formula coursed over her wrist, and then he was just shrieking; she’d blown her only chance for real sleep, maybe for another whole day, because he wouldn’t settle down for hours. He was furious, and she’d been so stupid, wanting a single moment for herself.

She picked him up and walked into the bathroom, holding him as far away from her as she could manage as he screamed, beating at the air, kicking wildly with his still-bowed legs, and she nearly tripped over a towel on the floor but then didn’t. She caught sight of herself in the mirror, the look of despair on her own face, her bad complexion, her paralyzed eyes. She saw the leaking, howling bundle of need that she’d invited into her life reflected, his cyclic cries beating at her, echoing in the miniscule bathroom that only had a shower that wasn’t even sealed properly; Carter’s face was crooked and unknown in the mirror, a changeling baby. She saw the roll of her stomach and her flat hair. She was twenty-three but looked forty and felt worse, and this was her life now; this was what she’d chosen for herself.

“It’s OK, baby, it’s OK,” she said, and knelt in front of the shower stall, trying to hold him with one hand while she flipped the plastic tub over. She managed, only getting a little puke on her arm, and got him into the tub.

Carter kicked and squalled, and she reached up to turn on the shower; the head hung down on a long, metal hose, and it was aimed away from Carter, but the water pressure spun it around, spraying both of them with cold water.

“Shh, shh,” she said, grabbing the showerhead, holding it, waiting for the water to get warm, while he screamed, the sound her mother had referred to fondly as the newborn cry, a kind of toneless, undulating wail that went on and on. She adjusted the water, leaning against the stall’s moldy plastic floor, aiming the pulse of warm water onto Carter’s belly, up to his sticky neck. He screamed and screamed.

The tub, a cheap, angled bin shaped like a frog with a foam mat glued to the bottom, was filling up. She reached up and turned off the water once it was to his chest, his flailing legs submerged up to their chubby knees. Sometimes warm water did the trick, but tonight this wasn’t the trick, he wasn’t having any of it.

She unbuttoned his stained suit and pulled it off him, and he screamed, and she used the wet suit to mop the spit up from around his neck, and he screamed, and she took off his diaper, and he screamed, and she saw that he had a nasty diaper rash in spite of all those changes, the skin around his tiny penis red and raised. She hadn’t changed his diaper since…since after lunch, could that be right?

“Carter, baby,” she said, and felt tears coming, she was so, so tired, so stupid and tired, and she was doing a shit job, anyway. He didn’t deserve this. She leaned against the thin metal that held the shower door and watched him wail and circle his arm around in the pukey water, and her tears were for both of them. She just wanted to sleep, that was all, just to sleep. She couldn’t do this.

The days stretched on forever now that the baby was here. He was exactly eight and a half weeks old, and she couldn’t imagine doing this for another day, another second, and there was no choice. She was trapped because she’d gotten pregnant and she’d been twenty-two and full of stupid ideas about raising a baby on her own, because she’d had no real responsibilities and it had sounded like something solid, a goal, something to do.

Carter cried, aaa, aaa, aaa. Chrissy cried, hating the sound of him, hating herself for wishing that he hadn’t been born, wishing that she would wake up from the dream she’d been living since the day she’d given birth to this screeching stranger, the nightmare of her life.

I should go get the baking soda, she thought. The rash was ugly, but the baking soda was in the kitchen; she couldn’t leave him in the tub, even angled like it was. Little babies drowned when they were left alone, even for a second. She’d read it in one of Cindy’s old magazines, how people turned their backs for a second and their babies inhaled water and died, just like that, no suffering, no nightmares ahead of them. They were just gone.

I could go with him. Even if she got away with it, she’d never be able to live with the guilt. She wouldn’t want to. She could go get the baking soda and the bottle of aspirin, too, and come back and keep the water warm and eat pills until the unthinkable happened and everyone would be better off. Maybe he wouldn’t drown. Maybe he’d scream until the neighbors came up, but she’d be gone, she’d be sleeping, and maybe—

Carter peed suddenly, an arc of urine that splashed up and out of the slanted tub, splattering across his tiny nose, droplets landing in his open, gummy mouth. He gagged, startled, and looked at her, his dark-blue eyes seeming to seek hers, his expression comically shocked.

Chrissy stared back at him, and then he started to scream again, outraged, and Chrissy laughed, feeling her wave of hopeless despair give way before a sense of sudden excitement. It was the first time she could remember him actually looking at her, seeing her. And it was the first time in a month she hadn’t felt alone, totally alone.

I’m his mother, she thought. I’m Carter’s mother.

“It’s OK,” she said, and pulled the plug on the little tub. “I’m sorry, baby, I’m so, so sorry.”

Water gurgled down the shower drain. She grabbed the towel from behind her and lifted him out of the water, wrapping him snugly, putting him against her shoulder. He leaned into her, resting against her, his cries finally dying down, his tiny fists curled against her shoulder, and she walked him back into the living room and threw a baby blanket over the puke spot on the couch. She bobbed as she walked, speaking softly, letting him hear her voice, and he was calming down, he was actually yawning against her neck, his body a helpless, warm weight.

She decided suddenly she would fess up to her mother about how she was feeling, and how sorry she was about everything, and maybe her mother would help her figure out what to do, to make actual plans. If not, she could call one of her old girlfriends. Leslie would help her. So would Tamara.

I could do that, she thought, marveling at the awareness.

Chrissy doubled the towel up under Carter’s bottom and laid him down, curling herself around him at the couch’s edge, and she fell asleep watching her son study her face, watching him clutch at her fingers. After a while, Carter fell asleep, too.